Snapdeal extends same day delivery to 15 cities with Snapdeal Plus

eBay backed Snapdeal has extended its same day delivery service ‘Snapdeal Plus’ to sellers in 15 cities across India.

The company had launched this service through a pilot in Delhi-NCR in January this year and hopes to extend this service to 30 cities by the end of this year. Snapdeal claims that it has enabled this feature by setting up over 40 fulfillment centers across 15 cities which will take care of warehousing, logistics and liaison with courier companies.

How it works

Snapdeal Plus allows sellers to stock their inventory at the nearest fulfillment centre and ship a product once the order is placed by a consumer. While a company release mentions that the products will be shipped by two hours, a Snapdeal spokesperson told Medianama that they don’t ensure shipments by 2 hours and the products are shipped anywhere between 2 to 24 hours.

Snapdeal will also provide analytics and reports to sellers based on their past sales, which apparently will help sellers predict how much inventory they must stock at fulfillment centers.

While Snapdeal has refused to disclose any specific details on how much are they are charging sellers for this service, it’s possible that this service could be offered a value added service to the sellers. Snapdeal claims that around 1,000 sellers are already using this service.

Strangely, Snapdeal also declined to comment on whether they would be charging consumers for this service, although a company spokesperson told Medianama that the service was available for free during the pilot. Note that Snapdeal’s competitors Flipkart charges an extra Rs 140 for same day delivery while Amazon charges an extra Rs 149 for it.

Last month, Snapdeal had also stated plans of opening its logistics platform SafeShip to other e-commerce companies as a service. This was after Flipkart had stated that it will be opening up its logistics arm eKart Logistics to other operators in February this year. Amazon India had also launched an assisted shipping service for its sellers last month.

Last week, Snapdeal had raised $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion from Singapore state-owned investment company Temasek Holdings, BlackRock, Myriad, Premji Invest and Tybourne. The company has raised around $350 million investment until now.